Friday, January 30, 2009

Dyeing wool with fustic

I started a post earlier, which turn into a saga about college and art and all this stuff, so for the time being, here's a post about dyeing merino wool with fustic!

I've been doing sporadic natural dyeing experiments - I started with random plants and moved on to a kit I had that included brazilwood, logwood, and fustic. The logwood dye came from logwood bark and created a bluish purple dye. The brazilwood actually came as an extract from brazilwood bark and made a red violet dye. Natural dyeing is a whole blog unto itself - water PH, types of pots, mordants, it's a complicated business. Fascinating to me, but more chemistry and science than I can really process. I was generally happy with my brazilwood and logwood results though, so I figured I'd try out the fustic, which is supposed to make a yellow dye.

If you're extracting dye from bark, you need to soak the bark and then boil it (The logwood came in similar form to the fustic, the brazilwood came as a powdered extract).
From 1/28/09


Keep an eye on the cat while you're at it!
From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09


I love it! I'm really into yellow lately, and this fustic makes a really beautiful golden yellow. After the initial dyeing, I added iron as an after-mordant, which is supposed to make a mossy green with fustic, and make the color more light- and wash- fast. I'm pretty happy with the results.

From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09

(Front: fustic with alum mordant and iron after-mordant, back: fustic with alum mordant)

1 comment:

pitchertaker said...

I had to look up the word, "mordant" -- it was not something I knew about. Glad to see you posting again...

P'taker